Colouring In

I know that I normally alternate between a Wreck This Journal post and a Finish This Book one on a Thursday, but since I got a couple of colouring books for my birthday and have been getting well and truly stuck into them, I thought I’d share my progress through the Anti-Stress Colouring Book.

Plus, I’ve got lots of things to stick into my Wreck This Journal but I’ve not gotten around to it yet, so I’ve not really got anything new to share right now.

I’m calling this page a lioness’s head, but when I started it I thought it was a tiger. Now that it’s finished, I don’t think it looks like a tiger and considering there’s a lion’s head on the facing page I’ve kind of decided that it must be a female lion. Perhaps I should’ve titled this post ‘generic big cat head’…

Anyway. This is the first page that I completed, just a few days after my birthday. It actually took me a good couple of days. I did a lot of scribbling while we watched The Battle of the Five Armies on my birthday, and then I worked on it before and after work through the rest of the week.

And does it work at stress relieving?

I’m not sure I’ve really been stressed enough to say. It is very relaxing though. It actually made me feel quite tired when I sat and worked it all the way through a film.

It was a bit tricky working on some of the more fiddly bits and about halfway through I realised that the patterns on the face weren’t actually symmetrical. But I like that it isn’t, it gave me the chance to play around with different versions of the patterns.

Some people online have complained about the fact that this book has some bits of the designs already coloured in, but I like that. I decided to colour in this face based on the colours that were used already, which is why it’s all blue and shades of orange (with a few hints of red).

I’d definitely recommend getting yourself a colouring book as a fun way to relax, or to keep busy while you’re on the phone or something. Why should kids have all the fun?!

Wordless Wednesday: Duck

Book 51 of 2014: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Yes, yes, I know, I’ve reviewed The Hobbit a couple of times here on my blog. But I like to revisit my reviews to see how my opinions have changed over time. So as I’m writing it up in my book journal, I might as well share it here as well, especially as each time I reread one of these books I try to read a different edition. So look at this review as more of a review of the Guild Publishing London edition, rather than of the story itself.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien is his first published story, the one which introduced people everywhere to the world of Middle-earth. It tells the story of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit who leads a fairly simple life, until the day that the wizard Gandalf shows up on his doorstep with a troupe of Dwarves and an invitation to become their burglar. Although somewhat unwilling, Bilbo goes along with them, meeting a whole lot of trouble along the way (including one Gollum who happens to have lost a small golden ring), before helping the Dwarves gain entry to their former mountain home, which has been taken over by a dragon named Smaug.

This year I decided to read a version of the book that I’ve not tried before. It’s one which I inherited from my Grampy, which I think came from one of the fantasy book clubs he was a member of. It’s eight years older than I am, with a lovely red cover with gold lettering (some of which has worn off now).

This copy is really beautiful. It’s got two-colour maps at the beginning and end. I’m fairly certain that I read somewhere that Tolkien wanted these maps to be done in more than one colour but that budget restraints stopped this. There are a selection of Tolkien’s illustrations through the book as well which I enjoyed. I’m fairly certain that I’ve seen all of these before (I may even have another edition which includes them) but it’s always nice to see Tolkien’s own view of the places he describes.

Another thing that I liked about this book, without sounding too weird, is that is sort of smells of my Grampy. There’s something reassuring about reading a book belonging to someone who isn’t around anymore and being reminded of them. I could imagine him sitting and reading this one.

I have a matching edition of The Lord of the Rings which seems to have very thin ‘Bible’ pages, which was part of the reason why I’ve put off reading this edition so long. I was worried about the risk of tearing the pages, or handling them with greasy fingers, and spoiling them. I needn’t have worried. Although The Lord of the Rings is very delicate, this is a far more sturdy book. The pages are wonderfully thick.

I did notice a few typos in the book. My personal favourite was the word ‘goomy’ where it should have read ‘gloomy’. I noticed a couple of others as well. I’ve noticed typos seem to be common in ‘book club’ editions of books. I suspect it’s something to do with the way that they were printed or copied from the originals. It’s not something that really detracts from the actual story though and at times it’s quite amusing (I don’t remember where the g(l)oomy typo was, but I think it was an Elf who said it, which is a really unelflike word).

I read this book in the run up to going to see the final film in the cinema (finishing it around a fortnight before we took a trip to Glasgow) so it was very exciting to read it and imagine how the final chapters might be translated onto the screen. I also noticed in my book journal that I’d started picturing scenes from the film as I was reading. I guess this is inevitable when you’re becoming familiar with a move version of a book.

In terms of the actual story, I should probably say something about my favourite bits. I have a lot of them, but I think Riddles in the Dark will probably always be my favourite chapter. I think it’s been my favourite chapter since I first read it twenty-three years ago! This time around I think I also enjoyed the battle a lot more than I would usually do as well, normally it’s one of my least favourite bits but I’m guessing it’s because of the anticipation of seeing it playing out on the big screen.

It’s going to be very strange this year, not rereading The Hobbit in anticipation of the latest film. Then again, the extended edition of The Battle of the Five Armies will be coming out in a few months… it couldn’t hurt to refresh my memory for it.

The Bookshelf Tag

Yesterday I was away at the Loch Fyne Food Festival (yum) so I’ve not had as much time for blogging as normal. Luckily for me, a couple of the blogs that I follow (The Book Coop & Ashleigh Muses) posted The Bookshelf Tag on their blogs the other week, which I ferretted away for a day such as this.

1. Describe your bookshelf (or wherever it is you keep your books – it doesn’t actually have to be a shelf!) and where you got it from.

I currently have two bookshelves (which are in the living room), the main one is a big sturdy pine display unit with two big drawers in the bottom. It came from a local furniture recycling place for about £30. It’s not technically a bookcase but it’s got these lovely deep shelves which means I can get two rows of books to a shelf (plus the drawers hold magazines and all Mr Click’s cookery books). Mr Click has a shelf and a half here, my Tolkien books occupy another, hardbacks are on the bottom shelf and everything else slots in where it can.

My other bookcase is my ‘Children’s Bookcase’ which holds most of my children’s/young adult books. It was an absolute bargain, picked up by Mr Click for a mere £5! When I was little I had a white bookcase in my bedroom which held all of my books, so this one has kind of taken over the role of that bookcase. The recycling place we got it from painted it white; if you look carefully in a couple of patches you can tell it used to be a garish pink colour.

I’ve also got a ‘book cupboard’ in Tara’s bedroom (an alcove off our living room). This holds books I’ve recently finished which I might want to look at again or books which I intend to read again in the future. At the moment it’s got the Harry Potter series in it; before that the Discworld books lived there. The book cupboard was part of my bedroom furniture when I moved to Scotland. It’s a basic Littlewoods bit of furniture. The drawers are falling to pieces, the cupboard handles have been replaced (and still keep coming off!) but it’s handy all the same.

Upstairs I’ve got a cupboard with five or six boxes and plastic tubs of books. As I don’t have enough room to get them all out on my bookshelves at once, they have to go out on a rotational basis. About once or twice a year I pull them all out, pile them up, sort through them and rearrange the shelves. It’s great fun!

2. Do you have any special or different way of organising your books?

I do have a system. On the children’s bookcase the books are sorted by series (so I’ve got The Edge Chronicles, two Blue Balliett books, the Myth series) and then individual books are grouped together afterwards in no particular order.

My main bookcase is a little bit more complicated, especially because of the doubly-loaded shelves. The top and middle back rows are single books, sorted alphabetically by author; the top front row is all Tolkien (or books about Tolkien) with a random Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams books squeezed in at the end. The front middle is for Mr Click’s detective books, some of these have spilled into the row behind as well, I’ve also added my Penguin Little Black Classics to the end of this row.

The bottom row is a bit of a jumble. The biggest and heaviest books live down here, so we’ve got a couple more Tolkien ones (like the illustrated editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, The Illustrated Stratford Shakespeare and the Earth’s Children books rubbing shoulders with the Colin Dexter Morse books (more overflow from Mr Click’s shelf) and a couple of biographies.

The book cupboard is used for pretty much anything, but again they’re sorted into series and the boxes upstairs are usually by author or genre (so all the Terry Pratchett books are in one box, all the Tolkien ones in another, young adult/children’s books in yet another, etc.).

3. What’s the thickest (most amount of pages) book on your shelf?

Not counting the ones on my Kindle, or any of the ones up in boxes upstairs, it’s my illustrated edition of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, clocking in at 1193 pages (not including the additional map pages at the back).

The Illustrated Stratford Shakespeare should get a special mention though. It’s got just over 1020 pages, but the text is in columns on the pages in fairly small print, so if it was full size it’d probably be over 2000!

4. What’s the thinnest (least amount of pages) book on your shelf?

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling with just forty-two pages. It’s only still on my bookcase because I was working through the additional Harry Potter books so if I’d gotten around to moving it to the cupboard it would be either The Adventures of Tom Bombadil or a tie between the Penguin Little Black Classics, which all have around sixty pages.

[Edit: I lied. I’ve actually got two poetry pamphlets which are thinner than all of these How To Hug and Other Poems by Susie Maguire, and The Hungry Ghost Festival by Jen Campbell, both of which have thirty-two pages.]

5. What’s the smallest (height and width wise) book on your shelf?

Roverandom by J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s a little squarish book, shorter than a regular paperback and not quite as wide.

6. What’s the biggest (height and width wise) book on your shelf?

Definitely The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (illustrated edition again). It’s a real brick of a book. You need two hands to lift it and it’s kind of impossible to read lying down in bed!

7. Is there a book from a friend on your shelf?

Yes, a few. The Hungry Ghost Festival not only came from my friend Jen, it’s written by her too; I’ve got The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman which came to me via Jen and one of the competitions she ran on HTV. I’ve also got Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett which was sent to me by Pempi at Pempi’s Palace. There’s Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte which came from a Secret Santa exchange on a forum I used to be active on. There are plenty of others which have come from friends, which are safe away in boxes upstairs as well. I’ve got lots of friends who know me very well.

8. Most expensive book?

Probably one of my Tolkien ones. I’ve got a first edition (third imprint) of The Silmarillion as well as the three volume edition of The History of Middle-earth which were about £150 to buy (not including the separate index book). I know that the illustrated editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are also pretty pricy.

9. The last book you read on your shelf?

A Strange Eventful History by Michael Holroyd which is also one of my heftier books from the bottom shelf.

10. Off all the books on your shelf, which was the first your read?

Probably When We Were Very Young, Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne. It’s been on my bookcase forever and I think I must’ve had it since I was about four (it was published in 1989 so that’s about right). It’s the same edition as well, though we’re both looking a bit worse for wear now.

11. Do you have more than one copy of a book?

Oh yes! I have multiple editions of various Tolkien books (though not all of them are out on the bookcases at the one time). I’ve got two editions of The Silmarillion (my fancy first edition and a paperback which is for actual reading), ditto The Children of Hurin.

The Hobbit is in my collection five times (battered old paperback which belonged to my brother, paperback from the 60s, more modern paperback, fantasy book club hardback and illustrated edition). The Lord of the Rings is in the collection six times (paperback which was published the year I was born, three volume edition, single volume edition with virtually no appendices in it, fantasy book club hardback, illustrated edition and Kindle edition).

Other books have some duplicates too; The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett (signed hardback and a battered paperback for reading), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (UK edition and USA edition), Chasing Vermeer (paperback copy with a printing error and hardback signed by author and illustrator which I received for pointing out the printing error).

12. Do you have the complete series of any book series?

Oh yes! I’ve got all the Harry Potter books (as well as the tie-in books), A Series of Unfortunate Events (as well as two of the tie-in books), all of the Walter Moers Zamonia books which have been translated into English, the Twilight books (purely for blogging reasons), Tolkien books (again) and Mr Click has all the Morse books (which are on my bookcase so get a mention).

13. What’s the newest addition to your shelf?

A four-way tie from when we went shopping in Oban: Becoming Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin (one of Mr Click’s but again, on my bookcase) and yet another edition of The Hobbit.

14. What book has been on your shelf FOREVER?

Many of the one’s on my Children’s Bookcase; The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig (which I’ve had since I was about twelve), Zlata’s Diary by Zlata Filipovic (from about the same time), A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (which I’ve had since I was about seven, I got that edition as a birthday present), Becky Bananas by Jean Ure (since I was ten or eleven), Golden Apples Poems for Children edited by Fiona Waters (since I was maybe eightish), and of course the aforementioned When We Were Very Young, Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne.

I’ve got plenty up in the cupboard upstairs which I’ve had going back that far again, like Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows which have been in my possession ever since I was tiny.

15. What’s the most recently published book on your bookshelf?

An eleven-way tie between the books from the Penguin Little Black Classics collection. They’re all short stories or extracts from the works of famous authors, although the original material was published way in the past, these editions were all published this year.

16. The oldest book on your shelf (as in, the actual copy is old)?

My copy of Jane Eyre looks pretty old and I can’t actually see a date in it. I think my oldest book with an actual date in it is probably The Adventures of Tom Bombadil which was published in the early sixties. There are older books in my collection upstairs.

17. A book you won?

Two which I’ve already mentioned; The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman and How to Hug and Other Poems by Susie Maguire, both through Jen’s book giveaways. Bonus mention should go to Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett which I didn’t strictly speaking win, but it was sent to me (with another book) after I wrote to the publishing company to let them know about a printing error in the paperback edition.

18. A book you’d hate to let out of your sight (a.k.a. a book you never let someone borrow)?

My copy of The Silmarillion from my Grampy or my signed Terry Pratchett’s. Actually, any of my signed books, come to think of it.

19. Most beat up book?

One that’s not actually on my bookcase at the moment because it’s in forced retirement (lest it completely disintegrate), it’s the edition of The Lord of the Rings that was published the same year that I was. I spent ten years (on and off) trying to read it so it’s been dragged all over the place… I may have sat on it a few times since it’s a good chunk of a book. I used it in an English exam so it had notes stuck in loads of the pages and the cover has been taped back on at least once. It’s in a very sorry state now.

20. Most pristine book?

The trio of volumes of The History of Middle-earth. They’re printed on ‘bible paper’ so I have special cotton gloves to use when I look at them. And they’re always placed on cushions, pillows or a beanbag when I want to look at them so that the spines don’t get cracked. Yes, I’m that careful with them!

21. A book from your childhood?

When We Were Very Young, Now We Are Six has already been mentioned, but I’ve also got A Little Princess (which I used to ‘play’ when I was younger, pretending I was Sara and forced to clean the school whilst living in the attic). I’ve also got Becky Bananas by Jean Ure (who was one of my favourite authors as a pre-teen, I was thrilled when I got to meet her) and although I lost my copy of The BFG at some point, I found a copy in a charity shop a few years back and so that’s back on my bookcase.

22. A book that’s not actually your book?

I’m not borrowing any books at the moment, so I’ll just point at the shelf and a bit which contains Mr Click’s books. Most of those were bought for him, I just happen to dip into them from time to time. These include all the Morse books, some Ian Rankin ones, some Hamish Macbeth books and a bunch of books (by various authors) featuring Sherlock Holmes.

23. A book with a special/different cover (e.g. leather bound, soft fuzzy cover, etc.)?

There aren’t really any with special covers out on display at the moment, but the most special cover I have is the cloth-bound classics edition of Jabberwocky. It’s so pretty. Though since I read it a while ago, it’s been relocated in order to make room for books I’ve not yet read!

24. A book that is your favourite colour?

Rumo by Walter Moers. It’s a bright lime green which is what drew me to it when I saw it in the charity shop where I bought it. The Wide Window is also a particularly nice shade of green, as is The Grim Grotto, both by Lemony Snicket.

25. Book that’s been on your shelf the longest that you STILL haven’t read?

I’ve been carting around a copy of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell for years and it keeps getting bumped up and down my list. I even downloaded a Kindle version, just in case that made me more inclined to read it. It didn’t.

26. Any signed books?

I have a little collection of signed books:

1. Suffer Little Children by Elizabeth West
2. Becky Bananas by Jean Ure (who I met when she visited my school)
3. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett (who I met and he signed it to me ‘with cheese’)
4. A Hat Full of Sky also by Terry Pratchett
5. There and Back Again: An Actor’s Tale by Sean Astin
6. Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett and illustrated by Brett Helquit (signed by both)

Hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip through my bookshelves. I’m not really one for tagging other bloggers in things, but if you feel like participating, leave a comment to link to your own post below. :-)

Not Really A Weekly Rundown

This post isn't really a Weekly Rundown post. I normally write my Rundown posts on a Saturday or Sunday about something I've been up to during the week which I think is interesting or feel like sharing.

This week, as you're reading this, I'm visiting the Loch Fyne Food Festival, so I've had to write this post on Tuesday. As the week has barely started so it makes writing a Weekly Rundown post kind of tricky.

The big news is that this week sees the end of an era. I may have mentioned once or twice (or three or four times) that my laptop has grown rather old and clunky. I think it's safe to say that she's been going through the laptop equivalent of the menopause. She often has hot flushes, sometimes switches off completely, and often spends a good part of our time together slowly (so S-L-O-W-L-Y) loading things up.

You can practically hear her snapping at me 'I'm doing it! I'M DOING IT!' whenever I ask her to open another programme and she doesn't jump to it immediately. For some reason in my head my laptop sounds like an elderly woman from New York.

Unfortunately for my 'New Laptop' the time has come for her to be replaced with a younger (not so hotter) model.

It's weird how strange this makes me feel. On the one hand, I'm thrilled with my new laptop, especially as it's a complete bargain, and it's a snazzy blue colour. On the other hand, my laptop has been a huge part of my life for the last five and a half years. We started this blog together. It truly is the end of an era.

I feel like I'm embarking on an exciting new stage of my life. One with a super duper 50mm camera lens and a laptop that actually takes less than twenty minutes to get up and go.

And this is what I'm working on at the moment. Black and white portraits! I'm hoping to track down some other people who might let me take their photos and mess with them.

You'll hear more about this and my new laptop in the future, I promise.

Film Review: A Series of Unfortunate Events, Part 2

Last week I kicked off the first part of a three part film review of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Now we know just who the Baudelaire orphans are, who Olaf is and what pure evil looks like, the children are going to have a brief moment of happiness before everything goes downhill again.

44. This next bit is probably one of my favourite bits of the film. I love Billy Connelly!

45. When I went to the Isle of Skye I got to see one of those snakes that Uncle Monty’s carrying. Sunny does not seem very impressed by it.

46. I love that Monty has a giant tortoise just strolling (or whatever it is that tortoises do) around his house.

47. Uncle Monty reminds me of Doctor Doolittle.

48. I love how they create cliffhangers in the film in the same sort of way that they appear in the book, like with the typewriter ribbon snapping.

49. Film!Monty is a much better character than Book!Monty. He actually understands that Olaf is out to get them and needs to take the children to safety.

50. I love that they got Billy Connelly and his autoharp into the film. I did say I love this whole bit of the film!

51. Oh, another fire. A pattern is forming.

52. Snicket kids on for a moment that this is where the film ends and that everything is good from this point onwards for them. It’s not, though we could just stop the DVD now and pretend.

53. Unfortunately Jim Carrey is at the door, wearing a bad disguise and pretending to be some guy called Stephano, with a really bad fake accent. The kids have to let him in, since he’s got a great big knife.

54. Hehe, ‘he’d give anything to be here right now’, cut to Gustav chained to the front of a steam train.

55. Klaus picks this moment to fill his older sister in on the mysterious spyglass that both their father and Monty owned. But right now the children need to come up with a way to get a secret message to Monty. Time for Violet to tie her hair up again.

56. They manage it via Petunia the snake. Monty doesn’t quite get it, he thinks Stephano is a spy from the Herpetological Society. So not going to end well!

57. This bit makes me sad. :-(

58. So now the children have not only lost their parents, they’ve lost Uncle Monty as well. Just to hammer this home, we get a quick shot of Monty’s gravestone.

59. Time for another of those cliffhanger moments as Sunny heads towards the Incredibly Deadly Viper, while Stephano/Olaf tries to get the children out of the room, and Sunny suddenly screams.

60. CGI Sunny is playing with the Incredibly Deadly Viper, thereby proving that Stephano/Olaf was making it all up.

61. And so it’s time to move on to the next guardian.

62. I do like the little ferry they go across on.

63. ‘Doesn’t it strike you as odd that none of our relatives are related to us?’ Yes Klaus, yes it does!

64. Meryl Streep plays a good part in this film though Film!Josephine annoys me as much as Book!Josephine does.

65. I love how all of the random things Josephine says, like not using the radiators or doorknobs comes back again in a little while.

66. Josephine is scared of the stove and yet she still has one. If she’s that scared you’d think she would get rid of it.

67. Josephine’s gone from one crazy extreme to another!

68. And we get another clue regarding the mysterious spyglasses, but don’t expect to learn any more about those just now.

69. I love Sunny’s response to learning Ike was eaten by leeches. ‘Oh-kay’.

70. Violet looks utterly horrifed at being grabbed by a weeping Aunt Josephine.

71. Aw, Sunny knocking over the basket and her little ‘uh oh’. I can’t help but wonder if they just kept filming the little girls playing Sunny, waiting for them to do something cute.

72. And look. Olaf’s back again! This time as Captain Sham who is apparently as dedicated to good grammar as Josephine is.

73. ‘Who could love a man with one leg and a face like a hen’s arse?’ You said it, mate.

74. Oh look, more of Olaf’s troupe. There’s no escape!

75. Josephine appears to have disappeared and the house seems to be threatening to fall off the cliff. Now would be a good time to leave!

76. Hehe, Violet gets so annoyed at Klaus spell-checking the suicide note. Luckily Klaus has remembered some books about cryptography and he’s able to figure out what Josephine was trying to tell them.

77. And then the house starts to fall off the cliff. But first they have to pause to take in some photos of fires and a picture of an eye window.

78. There’s no time to dwell on this discovery though as all those freaky things Josephine warned them about.

79. There goes the fridge that could crush them.

80. Then radiators explode, as does the stove.

81. Then a doorknob gets super heated and shatters into molten pieces.

82. And so the children wind up stranded on the remains of a bit of floor, perilously attached to the cliff but with no way off. Thank goodness Violet has her hair ribbon!

83. Bye bye home number three!


I’ll leave Violet, Klaus and Sunny there for now, homeless and orphaned again. Stop by next week to learn just what has happened to Aunt Josephine, what will happen to Aunt Josephine, and what other unfortunate events are lined up for the Baudelaires.

Chapter-by-Chapter: Twilight, Chapter 2

Earlier today we started off the Chapter-by-Chapter review of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. I was left wondering why Bella Swan had moved to Forks, why Edward Cullen was disgusted by her and whether or not she would be able to ever stop moaning.

Read on to see what happens in Chapter Two: Open Book.

What Happens?

Bella settles into school and is good at almost everything except Trig and volleyball. We also finally learn just why she’s moved to Forks (Yay!) Edward Cullen disappears for a few days and finally returns with a personality transplant. Apparently he likes Bella now. Or something. Who knows.

Thoughts as I read:

The chapter kicks off with the chilling line ‘The next day was better… and worse.’ What? worse than having to move to live with your dad in Forks and share a bathroom with him?! The horror!

It was miserable because I had to play volleyball, and the one time I didn’t cringe out of the way of the ball, I hit my teammate in the head with it.

Hehe, the thought of her smacking a teammate with a volleyball is pretty funny. I really hope that they include that in the film! I think by this point I’ll be desperately in need of some comic relief.

Included in Bella’s list of bad things about the day is the fact that Edward Cullen is not at school. I would think that this was a reason for the day being better, since the guy clearly hates her guts. I’d be glad if he wasn’t around making faces at me. It appears that this is a bad thing because she’s been fantasising about things she would say to Edward, if she’d actually been brave enough to say it ‘I made the Cowardly Lion look like the terminator.’ I had no idea just how funny these books are.

Considering how much Bella dislikes Edward, she seems to spend an awful lot of time bemoaning his absence. After Edward’s a no-show in Biology she comments ‘It was ridiculous, and egotistical, to think that I could affect anyone that strongly.’ Yes Bella, yes it was. Doesn’t stop her though. She also comes across as a little bit obsessed with the Cullens and Hales, looking out for them when she’s at school.

I’m kind of struggling to actually like Bella. She’s spending so much time whining about things and complaining about how awful her situation is. Then comes the news that she hasn’t actually let her mom know that she arrived safely. At least this kind of reinforces her character; Bella is really self-centred. Got it.

Her mom’s obviously worried about her daughter considering the fact that she’s sent three emails. Seriously Bella and/or Charlie, would it have killed you to pick up the phone? At least these emails finally allow us to learn why Bella is in Forks. Sort of. And it’s not that interesting. Bella’s mom and her step-dad, Phil, are going to Florida.

Bella gets stuck into her homework, reading Wuthering Heights for English. Of course she’s read it before but this time she’s just reading it for fun. As someone who read Wuthering Heights twice for my OU literature course, I cannot like a character who reads it for fun. It was just not fun! Though I’m really curious to know what Bella makes of the Yorkshire dialect in the book.

When Charlies gets home, we get a little bit of information about how his attitude towards gun safety has changed now that Bella is older; he no longer worries about making the gun safe by taking the bullets out of it:

I guess he considered me old enough now not to shoot myself by accident, and not depressed enough to shoot myself on purpose.

This probably shouldn’t have made me laugh. But it did.

Confirming my suspicions that Bella is harbouring an obsession with the Cullens and Hales, when Charlie gets home she pushes him for more information about the family. They sound like a really wholesome family; taking in troubled teens, camping weekends, being assets to the local community. They’re just way too good to be true. If I didn’t know that they’re going to turn out to be vampires, I’d be really suspicious of them!

We skip ahead to the end of week now, getting more information about how Bella’s bedtime routine is improving and another glimpse of her in Gym class:

In Gym, the kids on my team learned not to pass me the ball and to step quickly in front of me if the other team tried to take advantage of my weakness. I happily stayed out of their way.

Smart move, kids on Bella’s team. Probably the best way to avoid a concussion.

There’s still no sign of Edward as Bella gets to experience her first snow. True to form, Bella is completely and utterly unimpressed. It’s all cold and wet which just gives her something else to complain about. She does not join in on the snowball fight at school.

The snow fall also brings Edward back to school at last which means we should have something more interesting to read about than how well (or not) Bella is sleeping and what things are currently pissing her off. Apparently Edwards foul mood in the last chapter was just his time of the month or something (do vampires get those or is it just werewolves?) because he’s all nice and friendly now.

Seriously?! Edward was a proper jerk last chapter and now he’s being all nice and charming. Also he has magical, colour-changing eyes. That’s freaky. He’s also ice cold, which is a bit of a shame for Bella since she’s clearly not a fan of the cold and her boyfriend-to-be is made of ice!

And now that Edward is being nice to her, Bella decides to spill all. She volunteered to move to Forks to give her mom and step-dad their space while he travels for work. If I was Bella I think I’d try and find a friend who would let me stay with them for the duration so I could save all the upheaval of moving to a new school. Then again, perhaps Bella doesn’t have any friends, she’s got a bit of a bad attitude.

There’s a conversation that runs over two pages between Bella and Edward and I have no idea what they’re actually talking about. I think they might be flirting so I guess Bella’s gotten over Edwards’s bad attitude really quickly. I suppose a split personality doesn’t matter when a guy is really good looking and has colour-changing eyes!

With Biology over, it’s time for Bella to leave Edward and head off to Gym, where we get to see her playing volleyball again:

Mike was on my team today. He chivalrously covered my position as well as his own, so my woolgathering was only interrupted when it was my turn to serve; my team ducked warily out of the way every time I was up.

I hope we get to hear more about Bella’s crap volleyball skills as the book goes on. They’re really amusing me. It’ll be fun to see whether she improves any during her mandatory P.E. sessions or if she gets worse.

The chapter ends with Bella not concentrating on her driving because she’s distracted by Edward. In fact, she’s so distracted that she almost crashes into another driver, something that Edward seems to find quite funny. That’s… not very normal.

So of our questions from this morning, we can cross off one and add a couple more:

• Just why is she in Forks anyway?
• What’s Edward Cullen’s problem?
• Will Bella ever be able to get through a day without whinging about something?
• Why the hell did she have to get all of her teachers to sign a slip?
• What’s the deal with Edward’s eyes?
• Just where was Edward for all that time?